Gibson touts farm bill at Kingston market

KINGSTON — Rep. Chris Gibson came to the Kingston Farmers' Winter Market Saturday morning, to encourage people to take advantage of the programs in the new Farm Bill.

BY NATHAN BROWN

KINGSTON — Rep. Chris Gibson came to the Kingston Farmers' Winter Market Saturday morning, to encourage people to take advantage of the programs in the new Farm Bill.

Flanked by local agricultural leaders and Kingston Mayor Shayne Gallo inside the Old Dutch Church, Gibson, R-Kinderhook, encouraged people to apply for help under the many programs in the bill, like rural broadband and grants for farmers markets.

"You have to actually apply for these programs," Gibson said.

Gibson also talked up some changes that he thought would benefit the region, such as a change in the definition of "rural" in the Community Facilities Grant Program that will allow Kingston to apply for grants through the program. Gallo has suggested using this money to move Kingston's police headquarters to the former Bank of America building in Midtown; some Common Council members aren't sold on this idea, though.

The five-year, almost $1 trillion Farm Bill pays for farm subsidies and a wide variety of other programs intended to benefit farmers and rural areas. It also funds the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (food stamps), often referred to as SNAP. President Barack Obama signed it into law a week ago.

Gibson is on the House Agriculture Committee, and he wrote parts of the bill, including a program to extend loans to beginning farmers and ranchers. Gibson cast this as a national security issue — with fewer younger people going into farming and the average age of farmers somewhere in their 50s, the country could become too dependent on imported foods, he said.

Funding for food stamps was one of the most contentious aspects of the bill — Republicans had originally sought far deeper cuts than made it into the final version. The final bill cut $800 million a year over 10 years from food stamps, which critics say will cut an average of $90 a month in benefits to more than 300,000 New York households.

Gibson said the savings comes from saying households have to receive at least $20 in federal heating assistance to qualify for the highest level of food stamp benefits. Previously, some states, including New York, would give people a nominal $1 heating benefit to allow them to qualify.

Gibson said the cuts were targeted at "fraud, waste and abuse," and said that people who lose benefits as a result should reapply, since they might qualify based on income anyway. The bill does increase the value of SNAP benefits by 5 percent if they're spent at a farmers market, and it increased funding for food banks by $200 million.

Gibson is running for re-election against Ulster County Democrat Sean Eldridge.